


If I have been allowed to speak

by 2Lei



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Clara deserves better, Echo Clara, Gen, Mind Control, Missy is bad, Pre Season 10, Pre season 11, Psychic Bond, Psychic Violence, Telepathy, Time War mention, rassilon is a dick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 01:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16630613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2Lei/pseuds/2Lei
Summary: The woman formerly known as Clara escaped the time war by making a deal with the Master, but some reprieves only last so long. When she is re-captured she is gifted to the one man she hoped never to see again, the man who killed the Gallifrey, The Doctor.





	1. A Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Luxury $imulator, immersive game.
> 
> This fic won't leave me alone - so here it is.

She goes by Nova, now. Feels the trace under her skin, the golden tattoos and circuitries embedded along her arm, nervous system, spinal cord. The controls flutter, embedded, too hard a muscle on the fleshy softness of her underarm. They look like scars now, faded with time. She knows the back of her neck is an ugly twisted scar, accepts it. Runs her hands across it when she’s nervous, a reminder. The block in place, the Gild dead, and so she is free. As free as she ever was, more than she expected to be.  
  
She lives out a small life on an outer planet, so far in time and space from any trace of the time war that the local’s believe themselves the only sentient life in the universe. The town of Kay is coastal, the sea rolls to the horizon. The incursion of other lifeforms with ships and star technology rare and unlikely to stay to witness the plodding life of this small island with its small inward-looking people. The air is fresh and crisp and untainted with the spoils of the inevitable “advancement” of energy and burnt earth.  
  
Just out of the way of the main town, down a tumbling road past the sheep herders paddock, she lives in a seaside cottage and tends her garden. She’s known only as, that “faye girl” who lives “down near McGinty’s farm” and the locals leave her be, as she does them. When she comes into town to buy and sell, what little there is to trade in this small place, she remembers just enough of the person she was to make conversation, to smile, and to charm, haltingly, what she needs from the store minders.  
  
The nightmares still come, and if the locals hear screaming in the night, well, they know well enough the sound of what should be left alone. She lives hand to mouth, growing whatever she can, selling her honey, tending her chickens, watering plants knees bent and back aching,  pulling weeds to stave off the hunger. She feels alive only when the warm damp earth covers her hands, her arms, her scars, a pungent tang of metal and mould and dirt filling her nostrils. On the nights when the storms come, she gathers ink and pen, stokes the fire, and tries desperately to write out what haunts her, what will not, can not, be put to rest.  
  
In winter she suffers. Beyond cold, beyond hungry, gathered in her skins and wools, eating old roots, dragging in the firewood from under the lean-to with blue fingers and burnt red skin. Never able to rest, lest the cold finally take her in her sleep. And she finds that she will not let it, cannot let it. There is still so much to suffer for, so much that cannot be undone. Cannot be unmade. She considers it the least she can do, whatever suffering comes next. She is certain, she must live.  
  
So many years pass this way with little difference, the infant child born the day she arrived now limps to her door, quick witted and sharp with wares to trade from his mother. He is the only one unafraid of her, and she suspects it’s because, being crippled, he has no esteem to lose in the eyes of his people. They call him Danny, and something in that name cuts to her heart, has always done so, though she never can remember why. He’s come and gone and left her some good potatoes, enough, it seems, that this month she will not starve.  
  
She’s gathering plants in the half dark of twilight when she feels it, the burn, the sharp agony of it twisting up her arms, her spine, searing white until she can’t see. She falls.  Hands on knees, breathes through agony, hard rippling hum of the cybernetics, the effects they have thrilling up until her head spins and spins. Reset. Hard. Systems waring, the imagery, the programming. There’s nothing but darkness and noise and the chaos of the war until it stops. And she’s on her back in the garden staring at the  dark sky, the dead weight of certainty catching at her throat, her ragged breathing almost choked with it. She pulls up her sleeve, sees the gold of the tattooed circutry, curling in their circles, shining vivid against her skin. In her vision, the warning, the beacon is lit. It’s calling them here.  
  
She staggers to her feet, already knowing exactly how it will end, but she can’t help it, she holds on to some sense of last defiance, she runs.  
  
Stops barely to gather her things, and runs down to the beach below, to the cave where she’d crashed it.  
  
The TARDIS welcomes her as an agent of the Gallifery. She pulls the levers, presses the buttons, haphazard.  
  
Glances at the coordinates - the last place she can remember from before she fled, Earth, 21st Century. 


	2. A deals a deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When she crash lands, before she even knows what she’s doing, the Master is waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a been a while since my last update. But here it is friends! Enjoy some Missy / Clara chat.

When she lands the Master is waiting.  
  
 She doesn’t remember, why, exactly, this date and this time means something to her, but it does, after all these years.  
  
It’s a quiet street in a town called London, near a park, relatively wealthy. Familiar, so achingly familiar. The park is quiet, it’s afternoon and the air pleasant and warm, a stark change from Kay. There’s no one around, thankfully. When they come for her there will be no witnesses. No casualties. No pain.  
  
She finds a bench, and sits, facing an empty oval of grass guarded with poplar trees. She watches as the leaves tremble and whisper in the breeze.  
  
It doesn’t take long for them to find her. She turns, and a small shiver runs down her spine. The person approaching her is smiling, grinning really.  Their eyes are a clear and lipid blue, and absolutely mad. Nova connects the face with those faded half remembered dreams. The ones from before. Before the war, and then, even before then, the beginning, all those years. _The long way round…_   
  
She blinks the vague feeling of familiarity away, because of course she knows those eyes, who else could it be?   
  
“Master,” she says, “You survived.”  
  
They huff. “That was never a question, and it’s the Mistress now, new body, new pronouns, feminine endings, all that. Fetching, yes?” She does a little twirl, to show off her long swishing skirts and elegant hair, “Good to see you, I assume you escaped? I’d say you seem older but you haven’t aged a day, my Clara.”  
  
“That’s not my name,” says Nova, but the Mistress ignores her.  
  
“But you must call me Missy, everyone does. What a flashback this is… But I forget myself,” she glances around “they’ll be here in a moment,” she sits down and turns towards Nova, takes out a little device, a scanner.  
   
“Now, let’s see,” Missy holds it up a moment, then tuts to herself as she looks at the reading. She reaches for the back of Nova’s neck. Nova flinches, but the Mistress doesn’t pause, simply pulls her hair away from the back of her neck. Nova feels her gazing at the scar, the twisted mottled flesh, all that was left over from when the Master had ripped it out of her.  “Hmm,” The Mistress says, as though surprised by something. The little machine pings. The hand drops from Nova’s neck, and the device is secreted away.  “Well, poppet, looks like it’s all back online. I assume you remember our little deal?”  
  
“Yes, Mistress,” says Nova, because its true, she’d begged for the chance to get away, she’d promised.  
  
The Mistress laughs delightedly, high and trill. Nova stills. She’s just as mad, then, as the last Master, the one that was bent to war. Her expression no less cold, no less terrifying than the one Nova remembers, from his, her, different face.  
  
“You remember, dear, a deals a deal,”  
  
Nova feels the soft shudder of dread, denies it. “I remember,” she says, “I owe you,”  
  
“That you do,” says the Mistress, “that you do, honestly dear, I hate to have to call you up on that promise like this, what with neither of us expecting to see each other again, but you know what will happen if you don’t.”  
  
She looks down at Nova’s arm, where the slight glow emanates, the slight warning hum of the beacon, calling across time and space. _Betrayer. Betrayer of Gallifrey. Surrender or Die._  
  
Nova looks into the Master’s - Missy’s - face. “I guess you really do have a fitting name after all.”  
  
Missy huffs a laugh, soft. She smiles, the predator contented, pleased. She gestures Nova closer. Nova offers her arm before she can regret it. Once activated, she reasons, she won’t feel anything anyway, unless her Lady decides…  
  
“That’s a girl,” says Missy, softly, almost reverently, and she presses her hand onto the soft flesh of her under arm, energy swirling up to meet her fingers, a glowing hand print. It takes a moment, and then her hand is recognised. Gallifreyan DNA, a Time Lord rank is all that’s required. And Nova stops.   
  
Feels the pain cease. Her mind fall blank, certain. Fully content.  
  
She looks up into her superiors face. “Your orders, my Lady?”   
  
Nemo sees the wide pleased smile of her Lady, and knows she has done well.  
  
A voice, sharply amplified sounds from over the other side of field. There’s a woman standing there, and Nova knows that face as well. Blonde, stern, sharply dressed. Surrounded by a tactical team, and Nova can see, they’re everywhere now. Sniper lights flutter on her Lady’s chest.  
  
“Clara,” says the woman, “Where’s the Doctor?”


End file.
